Bonjour, Guignon
by RobertaWickham
Summary: Bossuet, having a mistress, soon discovers that he also has a friend.


Lesgle rapped again, with increasing desperation, on his mistress's door. It was late; the January night was cold; his friend Géroux had nearly been expelled by Blondeau, and had only been saved by the heroic self-sacrifice of their other friend Martin; and when he had arrived at his building that evening, Lesgle had found that his landlord had thrown him out because he had not paid his rent.

So now, with all his earthly goods in his suitcase, he was left knocking on Julie's door. He had a key, somewhere in the depths of the case, but he was not keen on opening it and digging through.

He had a key. That was such a lovely thing to have, more cheering than hot wine, more comforting than a sunny day. Julie liked him enough to give him her spare key.

Just at the moment, though, Lesgle reflected that he might need the key more for its practical function than for its spiritual benefits. Heaving a sigh, he opened the suitcase. Locating the key required a prolonged excavation, but Lesgle managed it—only to immediately regret it upon stepping into the room.

Julie was on the bed, breathless and tousle-haired, her nightdress askew. Piled on the other side of the bed was a large lump of tangled sheets.

Lesgle had always been clever at mathematics. He lost no time in putting two and two together. "Who's here?" His voice quavered and cracked, damn it all to hell—he sounded like a boy of thirteen.

"No one." _Her_ voice was overly steady, conveying all the assurance of the practiced liar.

"Oh?" Lesgle's shock had subsided after the first few seconds, but he still felt ill-used. Julie had seemed to like him, curse her. "Then you won't mind if I just sit down for a moment right here, will you?" He sat, with unnecessary force, on the lump.

The lump confirmed his worst suspicions by emitting an "Ow!"

"Aha," said Lesgle, rising. "So somebody else _is_ here, it would appear.

Julie threw her head back defiantly. "Yes," she said, holding out her hand as if to defend herself, which made Lesgle wonder uneasily what sort of brute the girl had dealt with in the past. In spite of the fact that he considered himself truly wronged, he began to feel ashamed of himself. There was no need to make a scene. "Don't you look at me like that, Jean-Philippe Lesgle. It's not as though you were perfectly faithful to me, I'll wager."

As a matter of fact he had been, but Lesgle was honest enough to admit to himself that this had every bit as much to do with lack of opportunity as it did with pure-hearted devotion. He'd been rather too busy to pay court to more than one grisette at a time, these days, what with one thing and another—Géroux had been talking to him about joining a rather promising-sounding newspaper…

"If you meant to be unfaithful, my dear girl, you might have thought ahead and not given me your spare key," Lesgle managed in response.

"How was I to know you'd use it this evening, with no warning?"

"It is a pleasure to meet you, M. Lesgle," the lump interposed.

"I wish I could say the same," Lesgle replied, with heavy politeness, "but I fear it would be too great a lie for my conscience, and further, I do not yet know who I have the honor of addressing…?"

The lump fidgeted and twisted before disgorging a head. It was an extremely irritating head, a head crowned with a thick and luxuriant crop of curls. Damn the fellow.

"Alexandre de Courfeyrac," said the head sticking out of the lump. "Wait—stop—I take that back. Erase the 'de,' if you please. I have cast it off like so much dross, and momentarily forgot. Due to the, er, surprising nature of our meeting like this, you know. It's just Courfeyrac."

"Ah," Lesgle said vaguely. He was experiencing a familiar sensation: the feeling of vacillation between two possible attitudes, two possible methods of grappling with a hopeless mess not wholly of his own making. He could shrug his shoulders and make a joke—or he could make an unpleasant scene. He could regard this Courfeyrac, with or without the particle, as a fellow human being, chasing girls much like Lesgle himself did, without much concern for whether the girls in question were carrying on with other men—or he could rage and bellow and challenge Courfeyrac to a duel. He could concede Julie's natural right to pursue love and pleasure in her own fashion, and accept that a bit of fickle and misleading coquetry was simply part of the game they all played—or he could shout and stomp and create a nuisance for Julie, whose neighbors would hear the goings-on. In short, he could be a philosopher, or he could be a pest.

Lesgle had very strong objections to being a pest.

"I congratulate you, Julie," he said, forcing a smile. "You have successfully captured, not one, but _two_ charming and attractive men, and have us both at your mercy. Modesty compels me to admit that M. Courfeyrac-sans-de is the greater prize, but I flatter myself that I am no very tedious burden either, and—"

"Save your piffle," Julie said, smiling back in relief.

"I am in earnest. Your choices are very well-considered! You have one fellow here with an excess of hair, enough for two men, and in myself you have another who is going bald. Balance in all things, that is the prudent way to live life, and you are fulfilling the standard beautifully."

The door burst open again, to reveal another girl in a dressing-gown, brandishing a vase. "Julie! Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Suzette," Julie said.

She did not look 'fine'—she looked as though she wished herself on the other side of France—a fact that did not escape Suzette, who frowned. "I heard a commotion. Are these men bothering you?"

She glared at Lesgle. He sidled away from her, trying to be as subtle about it as possible. This Suzette was a slight girl, but the vase looked heavy, and she seemed positively eager to bring it down on someone's head. Lesgle preferred not to be that someone.

"No," Julie said, "there is no trouble here. I swear. You needn't worry."

"Neither of us is doing Julie any harm, Mademoiselle." Courfeyrac gave Suzette a most charming smile.

"Hmm," Suzette said, uncharmed, her eyes scouring the room before coming to rest on her blushing friend. "If they are not bothering you, my dear, then one of two things must be true. Either you are having a most exciting evening, not to mention a highly perverse one," here she looked Courfeyrac up and down, making his cheeks go pink, and then did the same to Lesgle, "or you are a very poor juggler."

Julie buried her face in her hands. "The latter, I'm afraid," came her muffled voice.

Suzette laughed. "The balls came crashing down, did they?" Lesgle was not sure if she intended any pun there, but judging from her smirk, he rather suspected it. "My poor sweet Julie, you should not attempt deception. You are no good at it. Well, if you are juggling and have failed, then you should send one set of balls on its way, in order to avoid the awkwardness of all three of you sharing a room for the night—"

"It's too late at night for that, I think," Julie said, "and if I know Jean-Philippe, he is here because his landlord threw him out, and he needs a place to sleep."

Lesgle winced. "I must admit to the accuracy of that charge," he said, "but I would not dream of intruding on your time with the irresistible M. de Courfeyrac—"

"No particle!"

"Julie can come stay with me for the night," Suzette said, with a decisive nod, "and the two of you can sleep here. Unless you think they will steal from you or destroy your apartment for the sheer pleasure of it, Julie?"

There was an unflatteringly long pause before Julie said, "No, they won't. They can stay, if they don't mind each other's company."

"I would be honored," Courfeyrac murmured.

"Likewise," Lesgle said politely, embracing the humor of the situation. He had come here anticipating a pleasant evening with his mistress, and would instead share a bedroom with the man who was making love to her behind Lesgle's back. There was no sense in becoming outraged at this. The absurdity was much too great, and would swallow any outrage as the sea swallows sharp rocks and broken glass and corpses. The only thing to do was sigh, shrug and laugh.

"Your landlord surely didn't throw you out at this hour," said Suzette.

"No, he threw me out earlier, but my friend Martin needed some consolation and reward after our dear professor Blondeau expelled him today, and so I was late in returning to my apartment and discovering that I had been ejected."

"Martin?" Courfeyrac said, with sudden interest. "Not Théophile Martin, by any chance?"

"Yes, that very same one," Julie interjected, "the one who got taken up during the Lallemand funeral riots. Lesgle was interested in that, too; that was how we all became friends."

Courfeyrac's gaze flicked between Lesgle and Julie. "How thrilling," he said lightly—a touch too lightly. "I will have to prevail upon you both to tell me all about it."

"Tomorrow," said Suzette firmly, taking Julie by the arm. "Good night, you two. Try not to kill each other."

After the girls left, Lesgle became conscious of some facts making the situation even more ticklish. The room was not very big, there was only one bed, and Courfeyrac was most certainly naked underneath the sheets that submerged him. Or was that too much like saying everyone was naked under their clothes? Regardless. It was altogether too intimate a circumstance to be in with a man who had, a mere ten minutes earlier, probably been inside Julie.

"There is another mattress beneath this one," Courfeyrac said, interrupting Lesgle's reverie, and scrambling off the bed. "I'll help you get it out."

They did so, arranging the mattress on the floor, and taking more sheets from the cupboard, all in silence.

"I hope there are no, er, hard feelings," Courfeyrac said when they were finished, his hands twisting in his sheets.

Lesgle reflected that he was probably coming across as sulky. "No," he said, trying to sound amicable, "I was surprised, I will admit, but what will you? These things happen."

"Of course they do, but acknowledging that is of little consolation when they happen to oneself." Courfeyrac looked genuinely regretful, and Lesgle felt himself unwillingly warm to him.

"It is no matter," Lesgle said. _Embrace the absurdity_, he reminded himself, for fighting it would do no good, and cherishing spite would do even less. "I bear no grudge. And now, if you would like, I can tell you all about how I became friends with Martin, and the stories he told me of what happened after the murder of Lallemand."

Courfeyrac sat up on the bed, looking rapt. Lesgle smiled, and began the tale.


End file.
